In a deal that closes a key chapter in a long-running dispute between the U.S. Dept. of Transportation and New Jersey, the state will have to repay only $95 million of the $271 million that DOT had disbursed for early phases of a commuter-rail tunnel that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) cancelled last year.
The nine-mile-long Access to the Region’s Core (ARC) tunnel was to run under the Hudson River, from Secaucus, N.J., to midtown Manhattan. Construction had begun in 2009, on an early-phase contract. But in October 2010 Christie, who was sworn in to office in January of that year, killed the project, citing what his office said were billions of dollars in overruns and revised cost estimates.